The general availability of the .So extension opened yesterday April 1st 2011.
Yes on April’s Fools Day.
No joke.
I guess its poetic justice that the ccTLD for arguably the most rouge nation on earth didn’t even know any better than to open up its extension on April’s Fools Day
I didn’t write about it yesterday because I knew everyone would think it was a April’s Fools Day Joke.
According to one domainer who participated in the Land Rush for the .So registry said they got the domains, books.so for $51 and Pirates.So for $10.
The fact that the registry even made the domain name Pirates.so available is quite a sad statement as to how little the registry knows about domain names and the domain business.
How many .So domains did we register?
Zero
Zip
None
.So there should be plenty of good domains left.
Here are some of the details:
“The policy for the TLD .SO is liberal, there are no restrictions concerning the registrants, no local presence service is needed. The registration period for domains registered during General Availability has to be at least one year and maximum ten years. .SO domain names must be made up of a minimum of 3 characters and a maximum of 63 characters (excluding the extension). Only the Latin alphabet letters a-z, digits, and hyphens will be accepted.”
“Domain names beginning or ending with hyphens, as well as domain names with hyphens on the third and fourth position are prohibited. Technical operator of .SO is the Japanese company GMO Registry, for the operative tasks the Somali SO registry is responsible. The “sponsoring organization” of the TLD is the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications of Somalia.”
As the CEO of Key Systems Alexander Siffrin proclaimed yesterday:
“Many memorable .SO domain names are still available”
That maybe the understatement of the year.
DomainMonster.com is charging $24.99 per year for a .So registration.
Name.com is charging $23.99 for a .So registration.
As an extra added bonus it does not seem that the registry whois is working properly.
There is only ONE really great domains and that one is only so so. 🙂
Said.so is not available.
Did you also miss the “State of .CA Announcement” ?
://www.slideshare.net/CIRANews/state-of-ca-in-the-competitive-market
Damn Fat.so is taken. lol
MHB,
what do you think of “mortgage” and “lawyers” caliber names for .la , .md, .ms, .ma etc that match US states? They do rank, not as good as .com but then I haven’t seen one work as much on building links and content on them.
.state extension is second nature to everyone in USA and those in, say, Massachusetts understand that Lawyers.ma might be for their state if they see it in SERPS
“Many memorable .SO domain names are still available”
—
“Many memorable .CO domain names are still available”
3DR.CO
3DR.SO
Me
I think that extensions like .La and .Md etc were not marketed properly so your right in theory there is no reason why hollywood.la isn’t valuable as denver.co
So I think if you could get these types of domains in your example they make sense, depending on price.
As more cities go after and get their extension like .nyc and .sfo these 2 letter ccTLD’s that represent cities might become more popular as well
Good point. If we see .nyc and the likes, then someone in Mass is going to (kinda) assume that .ma is for Massachusetts, .pa (Panama) for Philadelphia and so on. Or at least be more aware and not be surprised. I have a chance to buy lots of them for tens of $ so… Never know
Philadelphia = Pennsylvania on the above post
As more cities go after and get their extension like .nyc and .sfo these 2 letter ccTLD’s that represent cities might become more popular as well
I’m not so sure… Multiples are unlikely to run sites locally it’s just way too much hassle for information which is essentially repetition, they don’t even need a sub site in most cases just a single page with all the locational information (location, opening times etc.) is all that is needed
mcdonalds.de mcdonalds.fr mcdonalds.co.uk yes different currencies, different languages, different cultures, different menus etc.
macdonalds.nyc macdonalds.atlanta etc. costs of maintaining sites outweigh the benefits therefore 3rd party/defensive registrations.
“macdonalds.nyc macdonalds.atlanta etc. costs of maintaining sites outweigh the benefits therefore 3rd party/defensive registrations.”
Didn’t mean that. The idea is that people will know that .city or .state exist. If you have lawyers.ma, Boston.ma or houses.la then it’s easier to sell /develop /get advertisers. Now it’s hard since all people know is .com, .net, .org. and some ‘other’ ones. That’s what I meant.
somewhat ironically Idontthink.so is already registered
“Many memorable .SO domain names are still available”
…now there’s a surprise lol
Same sales pitch when dot co ,dot asia came out
Eventually .so registry is not as good as .xxx ICM Registry when it comes to marketing its own products.
.so has no inferred or intrinsic meaning. Stands for nothing, but Somalia. Why would anyone register keyword domains with this extension unless to appeal specifically to those in Somalia?
Abbreviations that start with the letters: SO (1,800 entries)
Maybe Hostage.so would be appropriate as well to add to the Pirates.so collection.
Someone might be able to make some real money taking hostages and getting PayPal payments in Somalia through these domains.
Sounds like a great investment. JK.
.
In the words of ICANN exCEO Stuart Lynn – “This one just jumps right out at you.”**
The “sponsoring organization” of the TLD
.SO …Sponsoring Organization
** Stuart said that when the Internet Society was funded via .ORG
Michael, I think your source is mistaken about the actual cost of these domains. books.so may have only sold for $51, but then the registry holds it hostage and you have to pay another $1,000 to get the domain name in your hands.
🙂
“This one just jumps right out at you.”
The “sponsoring organization” of the TLD
.SO …Sponsoring Organization
XXX.SO would be the Sponsoring Organization for the .XXX Top Level Domain
That just jumps right out at you. .SO is the new ROOT
butler.so Available
“ICANN’s elected Directors will join the Board in two waves: the first wave will consist of nine Directors chosen by ICANN’s Supporting Organizations; the second wave will be elected by an At-Large membership consisting of individual Internet users. The Board expects the first wave to be completed by November 1999, and the second wave as soon as possible following that. In any event, the process of creating a fully elected Board must be completed by September 2000.”
There’s going to be a lot more extensions that no-one bothers with in a year’s time. With a flood of new extensions, no amount of marketing money is going to make a difference when the investment pool stays the same size.
Domain disputes are going to be a b*tch with sharia. On the plus side, reverse domain hijackers will lose their right hand, so disputes will be limited
there are very few words that end with “so”
morewords.com/ends-with/so/
and many already taken, like SES.SO (the italian word for “sex”) 🙂
@MHB
If you like Pirates.so then maybe you will appreciate some of these for Colombia (I only have like 10 .co total)
Hostages.co
Guerrillas.co (Guerrilla.co was restricted)
Jungles.co (Singular was restricted and thought it went well with the theme)
Got all at Reg fee
@Menius
Inferred? Intrinsic? I’m not one to defend .so but as far as I know so is so. Common dictionary word. I don’t think we need loo into too much.
.SO Supporting Organizations
.SO Students ONLY (Could become a viral Student place…for SOcial Networks)
UCONN.SO
BUTLER.SO
…then takes 30 minutes to build Social Networking Sites with NING.COM
Woa, BigLie has posted with his real name!
YES.I.PICK.BUTLER.SO
YES.I.PICK.UCONN.SO
YES.GATORS.SUCK
JUST.SAYING.SO
For me .so is no different then .tl, .cx, .pe….
only english cool hacks and keywords like poker, casino will be resaleable IMO
Looks like FREE is going to sell the best
@Jim/BLS: Do you see any irony in linking to your domain name, since DNS is going to be eliminated?
Shouldn’t you be using pure IP addresses in all of your posts instead?
ICANN Meeting
://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdjRwpYM-Kw
Perhaps it missed its window of opportunity. That window would have been 2006 to 2008. These repurposed ccTLDs are strange in that some have an obvious selling point (.me and .co) whereas others have a much weaker selling point. The registries and their promoters seem to be banking on getting a sufficient number of new registrants who seem to think that just because a keyword is valuable in .com, it is therefore valuable in every other TLD and ccTLD. The problem with this, for the new registrants and those veteran registrants who think that maybe this will be the next big thing, is this: .com is global and has approximately 94 million registrations. It has a volume of registrations that makes type-in traffic a potentially viable model. The .com has a presence in every market and possibly in every language. This is something that new TLDs and repurposed ccTLDs cannot match. The established TLDs (net/org) and the gTLDs also have this market/language presence to a lesser extent. However beyond net/org/info, the market percentages fall off dramatically.
But that won’t stop all those over-optimistic people who think that .SO will make their fortune. Some will make some money but the vast majority will not. People will read of all these high value sales in the fanboy media but they won’t read of the losses and the landrush anniversary dumps.
“The .com has a presence in every market and possibly in every language. This is something that new TLDs and repurposed ccTLDs cannot match.”
==================
.COM has U.S. Government PRICE-CAPPING …that is the appeal
The writing is now on the wall. The “Right.People” are being groomed in the back room deals. Those people (corporations & associations) will have bounded costs.
As .CO goes up and down like a YO.YO people will walk away.
://articleoutlet.net/2011/03/25/icann-violating-free-enterprise/
“There is no longer any reason to believe ICANN is doing anything other than restricting free enterprise and free trade by not opening up the market for tlds. It is no longer acceptable that ICANN should be the one to decide which tlds will or will not be created nor is it acceptable that ICANN gets to choose who can or cannot run a tld.”
Love those 2-Letter Top Level Domains for “Countries”
.PG – Proctor and Gamble ?
there’s a few more new cctlds coming in october.
i disagree that com names do not gather traffic in cctld’s. and i recall reading at least one published study that supports the fact they do get traffic. com is global but in many countries people may prefer the local tld (surveys i’ve read suggest this). so e.g. they may prefer to use hotmail.cctld than hotmail.com
maybe marketing can create value where there really is none, e.g. dot co. and more gtld’s if they come.
if enough users jump on some trend, it becomes valuable. even if there are better, easily discoverable, less expensive alternatives. re: computers and the web, who would disagree with that truism?
but… if one is relying 100% on marketing, it’s a very shaky foundation to build on. being a consultant, advisor or service provider is the ideal position to be in. you can’t lose no matter what happens.
these cctld’s and new gtld’s offer no improvement. there’s no problem of scarcity. it’s senseless to battle over vanity phone numbers (which is what domain names really are). new tld’s won’t make using a computer or a network easier. they won’t make information/content easier to find.
So many of these comments talk about the lack of value in a .so extension, but as more and more domains are bought for common extensions like .com, .org, these .so extensions will become more common and recognizable, and therefore more valuable.